Thoughts and Resources for Making Disciples

The Backbone of a Ministry Library for $6 a Book

Right now through January 15, Crossway Publishers has all of their ebooks for $5.99 or less and many of the plug-in apps for their online site for same price. This not only means great resources cheap, but an opportunity for me to pontificate on the value of ebooks and make some recommends for building a ministry library. (I’ll try to keep the pontificating short.)

As a committed reader of physical books, I have a love/hate relationship to ebooks. As I’ve stated elsewhere, the ideal would be for publishers to offer a package deal, selling the physical and digital book together. Until then, I buy some digital books when they’re free or cheap. I do this especially if they can be used as a key ministry resource.

Kindle has done us a great service by making their books copyable through the free PC app. So, if I’m planning to teach on any given subject, I can cut and paste large chunks of material very easily into my teaching notes. I can also search for teaching on a given topic or biblical text in a fraction of the time it would take with a physical book. Depending on what you’re teaching, you can create an entire curriculum from a book or series of books. If this appeals to you, then Crossway has done you a major service by offering their books for an amazingly low price (even for digital editions).

While, all of their resources are discounted (and are excellent), I thought about someone who might be entering the world of digital books for the first time. What would someone in ministry need for their first books, or as some key resources they will use over and over again? So from Crossway’s catalog of books, here are my recommendations that would make an excellent backbone of resources for a digital ministry library. By that I mean a core set of material from which you build over the years. This includes a set of pastoral commentaries (named such because the content were originally sermons preached in a local church context) and key works in theology. Most of these volumes normally cost over $20, even in digital form. At $6 a piece, it’s a steal. At a less significant rate of discount are some great books on key areas of pastoral and church ministry. I’ve added these because they are not only be great for pastors, but might be something you teach through with groups of leaders.

If you bought all 47 items on this list, it would only cost you $282. That is an amazing deal considering the normal cost of these books would be somewhere between $820 and $1175 (digital or print)! Nevertheless, if that is still above your price range, then I have place an asterisk (*) by the books I have read and would put on my 15 “must buy” from the below list. Click here to browse all of their ebooks.